Laughing Boy

Colinette Jones has everything to live for, and she's never late home. So when she fails to turn up for supper, and a body is discovered half a mile from her house, D.I. Charlie Priest has to make the call every mother dreads. Elsewhere, Laura Heeley is found dead at the side of an unlit lane - a single stab wound the only sign of violence. What connects these two women? Constricted by the foot and mouth crisis, Priest must trap the killer before he strikes again. Perhaps the fresh gales atop Britain's highest peaks might get the old grey matter working...

STUART PAWSON had a career as a mining engineer, followed by a spell working for the probation service, before he became a full-time writer. He lives in Fairburn, Yorkshire, and when not hunched over the word processor likes nothing more than tramping across the moors, which often feature in his stories. He is a member of the Murder Squad and the Crime Writers' Association.